Wednesday, March 24, 2010

I'm not a PC but 'yourbudgetresponse' was my idea

As reader's of Guido will have read this morning's, the Tories announced yesterday that they were going to crowdsource todays Budget. Guido correctly noted that this was something I suggested two weeks ago.

Yesterday, after sleeping most of the day, I received an email from Craig Elder telling me that they'd decided to run with my idea. So, as soon as the budget document is available anyone will be able to read through it and submit possible occurrences of sleight of hand tricks via yourbudgetresponse.com.

As I understand it, people will not, initially, be able to view all the comments that are made. This might upset some purists, but it's understandable that the Tories would like to use any lines of attack themselves and not offer them to Vince Cable's Lib Dem team as well.

Likewise they won't be wanting to let the Treasury, and it's massive band of civil servants know every line of attack in advance lest give them time to prepare their response too.

It's my understanding that once the official Budget Response has been made by Osborne and his team, the comments that were submitted to the site will be made public so that credit can be made to those that offered their views.

I also understand that blog and Twitter monitoring will take place during the speech aswell so that things that might be spotted by those of us watching can be picked up and fed into the front bench if worthwhile.

P.S: It seems Liam Byrne thinks this shows the Tories need help, whilst his Cabinet colleague thinks its great way to draw up a manifesto. See here for details.

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